06.12.07
Posted in Uncategorized, Committee Business at 9:39 am by admin
June 13, 2007 – 12 noon Eastern, 9:00 am Pacific
- Welcome and Introductions – Monica Schwebs, Co-Chair
- Suggestions for Changes to the Agenda – Monica Schwebs, Co-Chair
- Old Business
- Update on National Teleconference Planning – Bill Westerfield, Co-Chair
- Update on Planning for the Mid-Year Program and Primer on Climate Change and Renewable Energy (Note: Please also see the separate call for volunteers and speaker ideas.)
- Update on Program Committee Meeting held June 6, 2007 – Andrea Wolfman, Program Committee Chair, or Gearold Knowles, Renewable Energy Committee Vice Chair
- Discussion of possible Mid-Year Meeting program: Possible panel on national portfolio standard
- Introduction to Climate Change
- Discussion of possible panels for Primer on climate change and renewable energy
- Carbon Regulation (cap-and-trade and carbon tax)
- Renewable Energy Resources – especially renewable technologies and current developments
- Financing Renewable Energy Projects (with focus on unique issues encountered in renewable energy projects)
- New Business
- Idea for Blog/Newsletter Updates – Jeff Dennis
- Updating the Renewable Energy Committee Charter – Monica Schwebs, Co-Chair, and Bruce Malkenhorst
- Possible Collaboration with ADR Committee and West Coast Chapter on West Coast Renewable Energy Program – Bill Westerfield, Co-Chair
- Distribution of Membership List – Monica Schwebs, Co-Chair
- Next Meeting
Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:05 pm by member
Posted by: Josh Fershee
During the last committee meeting I said I would provide a list of some recent scholarly articles of potential interest regarding energy (especially renewable energy). Much of the recent scholarship I have been reading is on agency action and decisionmaking. I found a few to be especially interesting.
One recent article discusses the higher standard federal courts apply to agency decisions as compared to lower court decisions or congressional actions. Although federal courts will uphold the outcome of lower court decisions or legislation with which they agree even if the reviewing court disagrees with the underlying rationale for that outcome, the same courts will only uphold agency decisions where the outcome rests firmly on the grounds put forward in the agency’s decision. The article argues that, rather than a “distrust of agency lawyers,” this difference is founded in the enforcement of an “obscured” requirement of the nondelegation doctrine, which requires that delegated powers are only valid if the agency exercising delegated authority states the grounds for such exercises under the enabling act. The article further argues that such a rationale suggests that the President’s exercise of statutory power faces similar demands to be constitutionally valid. Kevin M. Stack, The Constitutional Foundations of Chenery, 116 Yale L.J. 952 (2007), available at http://yalelawjournal.org/116/5/952_stack.html.
Additionally, the University of Chicago Law Review Symposium: Intergenerational Equity and Discounting provides some creative and unique arguments for how agencies should regulate activities that will or could impact only future generations. The discussions cover many of the key issues related to regulating climate change. A short essay by Eric Posner, Agencies Should Ignore Distant-Future Generations, provides an intriguing commentary at the political and procedural constraints on developing regulations. A couple other articles that caught my eye: On Discounting Regulatory Benefits: Risk, Money, and Intergenerational Equity, by Cass R. Sunstein and Arden Rowell, and Discounting Dollars, Discounting Lives: Intergenerational Distributive Justice and Efficiency, by Louis Kaplow. The Symposium articles can all be found here: http://lawreview.uchicago.edu/issues/archive/v74/74_1/index.html.
Finally, I will put in a couple shameless plugs for some articles I have coming out in the next month or so. First, a paper I presented earlier this year, “Levels of Green: State and Regional Efforts, in Wyoming and Beyond, to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions” at the Wyoming Law Review Symposium, Wyoming Energy Development: A Community and Regulatory Assessment, will be published in the Wyoming Law Review. I was an invited presenter at the symposium, which featured, among others, U.S. Senator Mike Enzi, the late U.S. Senator Craig Thomas, and Rob Hurless, Energy Policy Advisor to Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal. Second, my article “Misguided Energy: Why Recent Legislative, Regulatory, and Market Initiatives Are Insufficient to Improve the U.S. Energy Infrastructure,” will appear in the Harvard Journal on Legislation. This is not specifically a renewable energy piece, but my arguments for additional transmission infrastructure generally are consistent with arguments for additional renewable-only transmission infrastructure.
Permalink